


Anatomy of Dragons

by henghost



Category: ITZY (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Drugs, Dubious Consent, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:33:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23104783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henghost/pseuds/henghost
Summary: Yeji gets too drunk at a party, and Ryujin has a sobering experience.
Relationships: Hwang Yeji/Shin Ryujin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	Anatomy of Dragons

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all see that new music video?

_ Drunk girls know that love is an astronaut / It comes back but it's never the same _

  * LCD Soundsystem, “Drunk Girls”



The dance studios in our company building have portholes in the walls, so you can watch without distracting the dancer, and so I would watch her that way, before I even knew her name. Her slender silhouette, reflected infinite in the mirror walls. The idea that I could be  _ with  _ her in any meaningful capacity didn’t even come across my mind — it would be like trying to picture the anatomy of dragons. Useless. She was a fiction, a fantasy. It was all so useless then. 

But of course then we were colleagues, roommates, “friends”. You know the story. Not that it became much easier to picture her as human. As far as I was concerned, she wasn’t. She was like an elf, or an alien, some B-movie antagonist.

I remember one night, at our dorm in Seoul, after we were supposed to be asleep, she clambered down from her top-bunk and flicked on the lights, which made me jump. I hadn’t been sleeping either. And so she knelt down so that our faces were inches apart, and she said to me, “Ryujin, c’mere, get out of bed.” And I obliged, and sat across from her, legs crossed. “I’m bored,” she said.

“I think,” I said, “that means you should go to sleep.”

“Can’t,” she said, and she giggled, and it was a high and childish sound, perhaps a sinister one. Then she jabbed at my stomach with her middle and index finger together like a spear, and I squealed, “Hey!” but she pushed me to the ground with her other hand and used all her fingers to tickle me like I was a kid. I writhed and squirmed under her but didn’t dare resist, even though I could’ve, I knew — I had a few pounds on her. But I didn’t push back.  _ This is the right place for me _ , I thought,  _ under her _ . My flesh seemed to part for her hands, which were supple and smooth and clean, as though we were puzzle pieces, my stomach and her fingers locked in a perfect equilibrium, pushing and pulling in a dance like how I’d seen her dance through the portholes, fleeting and shimmering and silver, occupying a space greater than would have been possible if it were a purely physical experience.

Bliss.

#

Even at our own party we had to perform. That was, after all, the draw. “You’ve been invited to an exclusive ITZY concert — totally free of charge”. It was Yeji’s idea, of course. She found a venue (a musty place among the remnants of a defunct warehouse), used her “industry credibility” to secure prominent attendees, and made us all promise to show up. 

I sometimes felt like I didn’t belong on a stage. Any stage. I stared at ours for the night: a raised platform which didn’t belong to the regular world. There was something almost prehistoric about that stage, like it hadn’t been built by anyone, was simply there, since the dawn of time, waiting for someone worthy. It felt like a lot of responsibility. I couldn’t help but feel like an imposter up there — a pretty, glowing thing for all the teeming masses to gawk at. That wasn’t me, as much as I would sometimes wish it was. No: I was much too ordinary.

Yeji, on the other hand, always belonged up there. She was born for it. Her comfort playing the idol was uncanny — and I mean idol in the biblical sense, a golden statue it should have been a sin to even behold. Certainly being up there with her, on the same level, was a sin. It terrified me. How I longed, then, to be among the screaming “fans”. That was where I belonged.

Even offstage, Yeji had a fairy’s beauty, as though she were just a visitor in the mortal world, kept tethered by pure belief. She was wearing a black and white suit-jacket, and had let her hair down. She sipped from a sea-green bottle of soju. By staring at her I could avoid thinking about my own shortcomings, fashion-wise, which were numerous, to say the least. She was acting as my shield against the partygoers’ stares. I could feel their eyes like needles in my skin, and I clung tight to her powerful arm.

“Why are we doing this again?” I asked her.

“I told you,” she said.

“Tell me again — to distract me.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “Because, Ryujin, if we never introduce ourselves, how will our industry colleagues get to know us?”

“And why do we want them to ‘know us’?”

“We could always use more, you know…”

“I don’t know.”

And she leaned into my ear and whispered, “ _ Money _ ,” with hot breath that gave me goosebumps.

A colony of people all around us, become more than a group of individuals, now a single organism, twisting and shaking and yelling in rhythm with music booming from hidden speakers. I saw Yuna and Chaeryeong chatting with a tall, androgynous boy. I saw Jisu dancing — too close, way too close — with a man who looked twice her age. As if they had all shed their personas in order to fit in this superhuman machine which controlled us, all of us.

The DJ, up above, sweated over his turntable.

#

By the time we were scheduled to perform, Yeji was on her third bottle of soju. She swayed recklessly with the music, and her drink tipped and spilled with each uneven step. I was very, very sober, on the other hand, and sweating, half from the exertion of keeping Yeji upright, half from the disapproving glances of the onlookers.

“Come on,” I said to her. “We’ve gotta dance. People are getting antsy.”

“Dance,” she said, leaning against me. “Dancing sounds good. Let’s do that. Come on.”

I gestured for the other members, who were wrapped around men I didn’t know, to join us on the stage. We were a sorry group, arranged in that all-too-familiar pentagon, looking down on the drunken crowd, whose mouths were uniformly agape. The DJ behind us turned on one of our “hits” and the programming kicked in and we began to move in perfect sync. There were cheers, oh so far away. 

Then, of course, maybe thirty seconds into the routine, Yeji tripped over herself and tumbled over the stage’s edge. I gasped and started to run to her side, but was stopped by a new, roaring wave of cheers, and I saw Yeji’s perfect form rising from the sea of bodies below me, held on all sides by a cradle formed from hands of every size and color. She was cackling. She was soaked — in what, I couldn’t say. 

We continued the dance, compelled by forces unknown. Yeji didn’t make another mistake. She performed with more energy than should’ve been possible with her blood-alcohol level. 

By our second song, the crowd was in a frenzy. People shoved and were shoved, their screams drowned out by the ear-shattering pop songs. I could’ve sworn I saw someone — a girl, I think, who had bobbed black hair — fall and be trampled. No one seemed to mind. The people formed a pit of limbs, visceral and brutal, and pushed each other up against the edge of the stage. Their eyes bulged and their faces were all beet-red. When the choreography involved lowering ourselves to the ground, I could smell them.

#

After the performance, I found myself in a sequestered corner of the venue, an office or something, which was quiet enough I could talk with Yeji. She was, against my wishes, sipping from a can of beer. Her eyelids drooped, and an acrid scent came off her skin: sweat and booze and excitement. I twirled some of her long dark hair around my finger — that’s how close we were. 

“I am,” she said in a slow, subdued voice, “a product.”

“A product of what?” I said.

“No — I am a  _ good.  _ I am something to be —  _ hic  _ — to be sold.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“True enough. I guess it isn’t such a bad thing. It makes me feel kind of, I don’t know, naughty,” and she giggled. She kissed the top of my head, like I was a dog.

“You’re drunk,” I said.

“Aren’t we all?” she said, and her head fell —  _ thump!  _ — against the carpeted floor, and for a moment the only sound was the staticky sound of the partygoers, which grew quieter as they reached the conclusion that things were pretty much over. Then she began to snore. Her limp hand was in my lap. Her other hand still held the can of beer, and I pulled it from her grasp and brought it to my nose, and the smell made me gag. 

I had been drunk once before. It had felt like I was several feet behind my eyes, as though I were a tiny creature piloting the massive, ungainly vehicle called my body. Like the world was a kind of projection, or a dream. I hated it. But maybe that was what Yeji liked.

Jisu, with her shining face, came through the door. The makeup around her eyes was smudged somewhat, and there was a tear in the hem of her skirt. She sat next to me and looked down at Yeji.

She said, “She’s never been very good with, you know, holding back.”

I nodded glumly and said, “Remember when we came back from practicing and all the food in the dorm was gone and Yeji was throwing up in the bathroom?”

“Ha ha, yes, I do. God, she’s crazy.” 

We were silent for a moment while we listened to Yeji’s troubled breathing. 

“Anyway,” said Jisu, “I think I’m gonna go home. I’m pretty sure I have something to do in the morning.” And she took my hands in hers and smiled wanly and said, “Love you.” Then she stood and winked down at me before turning to leave.

The purpose of her wink was revealed when something neon-green fell from my hand. I picked it up: a pill in the shape of the Lacoste™ alligator. I thought about running after Jisu to ask her just what she thought she was doing giving me some nameless illicit substance, but the idea that I would be leaving Yeji defenseless stopped me. 

Yeji. Here she was — under my protection. She looked so calm. I took my jacket off and laid it over her. The fluorescent lights above us seemed to grow brighter, and Yeji’s long curled eyelashes casted soft shadows across the bridge of her perfect, perfect nose and her lips which were made of smooth red clay, and I thought of all the times I could’ve touched her, put my hands across the curving lines of her body, but didn’t. Why? Why could I never bring myself to touch her?

I put the alligator in my mouth and bit down.

#

When it kicked in, maybe ten minutes later, the colors of my surroundings all blurred together and pulsed with the rhythm of my heartbeat. My brain slammed against my skull: first the front, then the back. My skin seemed to grip me harder. Everything inside me was amplified.

I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling and, in vivid detail, I remembered:

I remembered the time before our debut when Yeji had invited me to dinner with her and had made a big deal of paying for the both of us. And how, in the narcotic satiation that followed, she had told me how she was always hungry. Always so, so hungry. Like she could never get enough.

I remembered the week after the release of our first batch of songs when we had spent one of our precious few days off in a mall. And we went in one of the only record stores left on earth, and I saw, in an ornate kiosk, our album, a million copies flanked on all sides by cardboard cutouts of  _ us _ . I couldn’t stop staring at it, our stony representation, and in the end I burst into tears, and Yeji rushed to my side and put my head against her shoulder and took me to the bathroom and told me everything was going to be okay while redoing my makeup.

I remembered the night of tickling, and I remembered the scene from earlier: Yeji held aloft by a mob of strangers, grinning and godlike. 

There was by then a burning sensation around the inside of my stomach and down the meagre length of my legs. I rubbed my arms and the sensation was so pleasurable I gasped. Yeji’s snoring was the best song I had ever heard. 

I stroked her hair — soft and silky despite the night’s events. I ran my hands along her waist and hips and thighs. I couldn’t find a single blemish. I put my hand under her shirt and felt the stiff muscles, the warmth of her inner functions. She was so perfect, and there was so much of her. I pulled my jacket away from her, and I bent to kiss the nape of her neck, and I put my legs on either side of her body.    


Then, slowly, carefully, spurred on by the fiery adrenaline in my gut, I lifted her thin, cotton shirt over her head. I swallowed, and I lifted her up and, despite my badly trembling fingers, I undid the strap of her pitch-black bra. My heart thumped up into my throat. I lifted the cloth away from her chest and—

Instead of more limpid skin was a coating of scales. Scales like a snake’s, green and shimmering under the harsh light. A lump grew in my throat. Tears spilled out of my eyes and onto her face.  _ Of course _ , I thought.  _ Of course _ .


End file.
